shannon_a

Last night was my final night of gaming at Secret.

That's been the Wednesday-night Endgame replacement, since Endgame closed last holiday season, brought to us courtesy of Joss. Secret is a weird little Victorian house, whose downstairs is split between a shop on the right and a venue with a stage on the left, and with lots of people living in it, with a loft bed at the back of the venue (where we also game) and presumably more tight accommodations upstairs.

It's part of the more rebellious artsy part of Oakland that I've never been part of. Kind of counter-culturey. Joss, our host, is good folk, and all the other residents I've met there are very nice, happily greeting us, and even cooking us food(!). I'd say it's not exactly my scene, and it's not, but I was entirely comfortable there.

I mean, I missed the lofty soaring mezzanines at Endgame, where Secret felt claustrophobic in comparison. I missed the regular tables and chairs, where in comparison we were always setting up ad hoc tables at Secret, with a huge menagerie of seating.

But of course it was always the people that kept me coming back to Endgame, and later Secret. There were many people who never made the transition, but our remaining group was strong, with a few additions starting to dribble in because Joss was clearly doing some advertising and finding like-minded souls.

So last night I played Res Arcana with Eric V., Hey, and Mack, then after Hey left I played Wingspan with the remaining two. (Mack won both games; I love playing games with strong players!) And then I said goodbye to them and Joss and Belle (but not Sam, who I'll see again for some PACG games) and exchanged lots of hugs and lingered for a bit, then finally escaped into the cool Oakland night, hiking out to BART, who'd apparently just taken a train leading to Richmond out of service, leaving me in for a 20-minute wait. (Good 'ole BART. I remember when they mostly worked, 30 years ago.)

And it was the end of an era, just like the shipping of our furniture the morning before.

There are going to be lots of those in the weeks ahead.

---

Last night I had a dream about fighting off alien invaders with some newfound friends while a teenager at summer camp.

I don't remember many of the details, other than capturing the queen bee alien (who was bee-sized and shaped) and keeping her in a Plano box. We thought we'd cut her off from all communication with her drones, but then we came in and found a bee flying under the box in perfect synchronization with the queen bee flying inside the box, like they were connected by magnetic forces. DUM DUM DUM!

And then it was later and my friends and I were meeting up on a hillside road, saying goodbye. And it was clearly a big turning point in our lives, and as we hugged and cried, the subtext was that we'd never see each other again, because our lives were about to more forward at supersonic speed.

And I woke up thinking, "I was never that teary about leaving my high-school friends behind".

And then I realized that I was dreaming about Stranger Things and imagining Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Will, Six and the rest saying goodbye after their lives inevitably moved on. That Stephen King theme of never having such good friends as those you had while growing up always touches me. I mean, it's totally bunk, because those friends I had for five or six years in Jr. High and High School are never going to match my twenty-year relationship with my wife or the gaming friends I've known at Endgame for more than fifteen years or my Cal gaming group who I've known for thirty. But there's some truth there too because of the immersiveness of play when we're young, the novelty of every experience, and our ability to give ourselves freely without boundaries before life closes in on us.

And I smiled.

And then I realized that I was dreaming about leaving my gaming friends from Secret and Endgame.

And I smiled a bit less.

---

But the end of an era also means the beginning of a new one.

I'm now getting up at 6am, which will be 9am Toronto time. Still, not early enough, but within striking distance. I'll get up at 5am on Tuesday, and have a pretty leisurely meander out to my 10am flight, then I'll have to immediately jump back one more hour, to 4am or so (California time), as the Rebooting the Web of Trust seminar will be starting at 8am each day (Toronto time). Sounds doable.

One of the joys of getting up so early is that I get to see Berkeley in an early morning light that I never see, and if it's a Saturday when I have time to go out, and I can have a really full day. So yesterday I was up at 6am, while it was still dark out. By the time I left the house at 6.30, it was gray, though the sun hadn't risen yet.

My general goal was Redwood Regional Park, which is a fair ways away from our house. Rather than going up through Strawberry Canyon into the hills immediately behind our house (which swings me a fair ways north before I head back south), I decided instead to make the ascension up through the canyon containing the Caldecott Tunnel (whose name I still do not know), under the theory that it would get me there quicker.

I was playing it by ear as I headed toward the hills, but I eventually decided to head for the Claremont Hotel, as I vaguely recalled a trail from the employee's parking lot that led up to the Claremont Hills. Sure enough! That's the Evergreen Path. From there, I wandered quiet streets fronted by beautiful, multi-million-dollar homes, most of which were also gated to truly keep the undesirables out. As I walked southward on the hill, I came to a steep, worn stone stairway going up, and after a bit of walking in more rarified airs, I found another steep but better upkept stairway going down. They're both marked but unnamed on Google Maps. I'd never walked either before.

It had been surprisingly foggy throughout the walk, especially in the Hills, and that only increased as I walked up past the Highlands Country Club. (If you are picturing a snooty, overprivileged area, that's the Claremont Hills, and really most of the hills in Berkeley and Oakland.) I eventually got up to Spy Glass Hill, a road that's marked as private (privileged, as I said), but whose only posted restriction is against parking, so I gamely walked across it. On the other side, I was on Hiller Drive, which leads down to the Gateway Exhibit Emergency Preparedness Center (a raised wooden platform with nice views remembering the Berkeley Hills Fire, which back in 1991 actually destroyed most of the area I'd just walked through). From there it was across 24, and into my first of many parks of the day.

The North Oakland Regional Sports Center lies at the bottom of a largely undeveloped area of park (also destroyed in the 1991 firestorm). I hit it at 8am. While walking down Hiller Drive, I could barely see 10 feet ahead of me, an amount of fog that I love but rarely see around our house. But it very abruptly cleared as I hit the Sports Center. It'd been sunny and warm within 10 or 15 minutes, a shocking change.

The "Sports Center" area is largely open with light tree cover; it takes you pretty quickly up a few hundred feet. Although not super attractive, it's a shortcut that keeps you off of Tunnel Road. At the top (which I'd bet is going to get blocked off someday, because it's so semi-official, and there was indeed some threatening construction near the top), I re-merged with Skyline Boulevard and walked that a mile to Sibley, the next park. It's a pity there's no direct connector from the Sports area to Sibley, as there's a lot of open space up there, but that's pretty typical for Oakland's attention to its parks. Once I hit Sibley, though, it was parks for miles and miles, everything connecting until I left Dimond, many hours later.

Oh, and I rediscovered the fog while walking Skyline. It was all clearly visible below me, carpeting the entirety of the East Bay and the bay itself. Mount Tam was visible, more an island than ever, and maybe a few peaks in San Francisco, but for the most part the wide sweep of land and water now visible below me was invisible beneath the fog.

Anywho, Sibley, which I hit at 9am. I didn't take the most attractive route through that park, instead going along the main paved path until I got to the side-path that heads south. That took me into Huckleberry, which is a gorgeous and unique reserve, full of tight paths and ferns. It's largely set in a valley, so when you go from Sibley to Huckleberry, you drop down into that valley and then go back up, which is gorgeous both ways.

There's a connector trail from Sibley to Redwood Regional Park, with a bench right there at a crossroads. Almost four hours after I'd set out, I sat down there and had a few pieces of chocolate to tide me over, as I have before.

I got into the northeast corner of Redwood Regional Park about 10.30am. That was my next big decision point. I have long dreamed of walking to Castro Valley and Google told me it was 12 miles and about four and a half hours to the Castro Valley BART. I seriously considered it, but ultimately decided that I didn't want to strain myself that much three days before a big trip. There was also the option of catching a bus at the Chabot Space & Science Center down to Fruitvale BART, which is what I'd done before when I took a longer route up to Redwood Regional. But ultimately I decided that I could walk longer than that, that I wanted to cut down, down, down the hill and see where it took me. That led me to decide not to dawdle too long in Redwood Regional, which is too bad because it's a beautiful park. But I just hiked around the West Ridge Trail.

I could have avoided Roberts entirely, but there's a beautiful open area there called the Redwood Bowl, and I wanted to stop there for lunch. I made it by about 11.30 and had my sandwich and chips, which I'd been thinking about all morning. Definitely one of the prettiest parts of Roberts. (The rest looks mainly like Redwood Regional Park, which it directly adjoins.)

From there it was across Skyline Blvd (again) and into Joaquin Miller Park, which I've grown increasingly fond of over recent visits. It's heavily wooded with numerous redwoods, and the bottom of it is a vertical climb down along Sausal Creek. I took a path down that I've grown pretty familiar with, stopped at the "Meadow" to have some more candy and write for a while (and rest!), then headed down through the rest of the park. I know I was writing from sometime before 1pm to sometime after 1pm, and after that I lost track of time.

Next up was Dimond Canyon, which almost directly adjoins Joaquin Miller. (You walk through a tunnel under 13, then walk along a residential street for a bit.) I'd never walked the canyon before, and in fact have been long intimidated by a sign that claims the trail is block at Leimert Bridge. But I looked at the maps carefully and saw that there were two paths going under the Bridge and one going up to the Bridge, and I figured at least one of them would be OK. (I was exactly right.)

The surviving Dimond Canyon trail actually runs along the upper south side of the Canyon, meaning that you're up in the heights. I enjoyed being able to look down into the valley and onto the golf club on the other side (yet, more privilege up in the hills) and across Forest Blvd at various things that I've biked by, while going up that big hill. A side path drops down to Sausal Creek itself, in advance of Leimert Bridge. It was free and unblocked, so I happily took that down. However, at its southmost extent, it was clearly blocked by a few fallen trees, and looking past it, I saw that the path has become almost non-existent, so that's another park that Oakland has let fall into total disrepair. And, it's a crying shame because this is the parkland thoroughfare to Dimond Park proper, and a major way to get up and down the hills in that area without using a car. The cynical part in me wonders if home owners in Oakmore (up at the top of Dimond Canyon) were happy (or even participatory) in that trail getting blocked, to keep plebeians from lower in the hills from having easy access to their hillside properties.

No matter, I had my own route planned for there. I backtracked and took the third (and only remaining) trail up to Leimert Bridge. The fact that there are no trails beyond that, to get back down to the creek, just underlined the segregation. Meanwhile I headed back north along Trestle Glen Road, a long road that winds down from Oakmore to Lake Merritt, through an attractive neighborhood that's one of my favorite rides toward the Oakland Hills. (It's a lot longer when walking.)

And by then I was almost done. There was a stop at Trader Joe's (to get some dinner and some supplies for the trip to Toronto), then a walk around Lake Merritt (and I'm always shocked by how beautiful it is). Then it was over to BART and home ...

Total walk was just short of 50,000 steps and just more than 21 miles, and I was out from about 6.30am to 5pm. By my count the walk out to Castro Valley would have just been 3-4 miles more than what I did, but my feet were aching by the end of my walk, so it's good I didn't do the longer one.

It's been 27 years since the Oakland Firestorm ripped through the East Bay Hills. 27 years minus exactly one week, which is to say it was this time of year. The Diablo Winds were whipping, the brush was dry as straw after a long, hot summer. The conditions were perfect for a disastrous fire, are always perfect for a disastrous fire this time of year in Northern California.

Twenty-seven years later, I can still see the scars of that Firestorm on the land. I mean they're not explicit. There's one memorial that I know of, up above Lake Temescal, but it's small and not well-loved. And the greenery, that all grew back. In fact, the first time I ever went up to Lake Temescal, admittedly more than a decade after the Firestorm, I was shocked to see that there was no indication that anything ever had burned.

But the problem is that the buildings grew back too, the over 3,000 houses and apartments that burned in the Firestorm. And they grew back larger and more invasively lying upon the ridgeline. For those families the nicer residences were probably just the slightest bit of repayment for what they lost, but it changed the character of the East Bay Hills forever.

I'm sure those aren't the only scars. There were 25 dead. I'm sure that many abandoned their beloved homesteads forever.

Fire is by its very nature transformative. Suddenly, harshly so.

---

I was on the highway when the Firestorm hit. Heading down 880 to Fremont with a friend, a trip that was all but unknown in those college days. I was helping Bill shop for a new computer or an accessory or something at Fry's Electronics, I don't remember what exactly. But as we drove south we saw the black smoke billowing out across the highway from the hills. I think we turned on the radio and heard about the fire, but we weren't concerned enough to turn back. I think we made it to Fremont and did whatever arcane computer purchase we were planning. You know, like buy an i486 computer or a 28.8k modem.

By the time we got back there were evacuations going on, and Bill was living in married student housing, just north of Clark Kerr. I thought of them as way up a huge hill at the time, but now I pass by them whenever I do one of my walks above Clark Kerr. Of course the apartments are abandoned now, in some process of being torn down. (Bill tells me that he lived in two different apartments up there, and when he was moved out of one, it was abandoned, and he later went back to that empty first apartment and saw mushrooms growing up out of his living room rug, so apparently this emptying of those buildings has been an ongoing process for a while.) Anyway, the point is they were in the hills, a fair amount north of where the fire got to, but close enough for the fire department to be concerned.

I put Bill and family up in my little one-room apartment, giving them the mattress off my bed to sleep on. It was totally inadequate, but it was a sucky day, and at least it gave them somewhere to rest their heads until they figured out what to do the next day. Did they go home or onto a shelter? I dunno, that's the edge of memory.

Heck, this is all the edge of my memory. I'm not really certain we made it down to Fremont. I'm not even certain that I haven't conflated two different friends. That's why asking people for their memories of things two or three decades gone by is tough. I do it all the time for Designers & Dragons, but when I get curious or conflicting answers, I do my best to remember how troublesome memories can be.

---

I mention this all because it's my only real touchstone for the North Bay fires that are ravaging Napa and nearby regions right now. And, as far as I can tell, it's a small inadequate touchstone. This time, we're losing hundreds of thousands of acres. Thankfully things are more spread out up there than in Montclair, Piedmont, and Forest Hills, here in the East Bay, but the loss in structures and lives is already comparable, and will certainly grow by the time it's all said and done.

So, I'm certainly aware of the horror north of us, the human suffering, and the ongoing uncertainty.

But I can also only truly understand what I'm seeing here, in the East Bay.

---

Smoke. That's what I see and smell.

It was with me Sunday morning when I woke, permeating the whole house (thanks to the windows we haven't yet replaced, and apparently never will). It made my eyes water and my throat scratchy.

The next few days weren't as bad. I even opted to go out for a hike Wednesday morning as the sun rose, and I couldn't smell any smoke in the air.

But then Wednesday afternoon was the worst. A cover of haze lay heavy upon Berkeley. The sun glimmered through like a warped orange spotlight. Everything took on tangerine tones. I decided to go grab a sandwich, because I didn't have quite enough lunchmeet to last the week, and to get some necessities from the drug store, notably including melatonin ... and I regretted going out. I mean, I was keeping to a slow pace to not breathe the gunk in the air in too much, and when you're thinking about that type of thing, you don't want to be out.

This morning I woke, and the first thing I smelled again was smoke. No hike today.

At least the sky looks better now that the sun's out. Maybe I can get some last hill-time in at dawn on Friday and Saturday.

---

The haze hasn't all been physical, but metaphorical too. Since Sunday night, when I headed off to bed about 24 hours after arriving back in the Bay Area, I've been feeling like I have too little time. The week is rushing by, and it's constantly felt like I'm leaving for Berlin almost immediately after returning from Boston.

This isn't helped by my keeping an early, east-coast schedule, to make the transition to Berlin time easier. (We'll see about that!) Bed at 9 or 10 makes me feel like there's no evening, and being up at 5 or 6 doesn't replace that lost time.

So the days rush by in a haze.

---

Work? That's not too bad. I cleared so much off my plate before Boston that I don't feel as rushed. Which isn't to say that I don't have plenty to do. The Rebooting the Web of Trust papers are coming in faster than ever before, and so I'm triaging the first ones before I leave. We've also got a real crisis coming up at Skotos, with one of our major game clients going dead in five weeks due to Netscape rewriting their whole Add-On system for their November 14 release, and I'm stressed about that replacement getting out in time. When I'm back from Berlin I'll have just three weeks and change left, and I'll need to go all out to make sure that occurs.

---

Home? That's a crisis of a different type. K. found out that she'd hurt her foot badly just before I left for Boston, and so was given a boot to wear. This week, she was told it's not really healing and she needs to pretty much totally stay off it. Which kinda sucks when she's going to be home alone for the next week.

So, much like before-Boston, I'm trying to make sure the house is stocked up with what she needs. Yesterday we tag-teamed laundry, with her doing the stuff that could be done sitting (like sorting and folding) and my doing the stuff requiring standing (like putting things into the machines and into the drawers). It worked well. But there's still prep to be done.

So, a little bit of a haze there too.

---

I am looking forward to Germany. Visiting Berlin is quite possibly a once in a lifetime opportunity and working with Blockstream for three days of off-site should help to keep me efficient and knowledgeable about the tech-writing I'll be doing for them in the next year. And I'll be seeing and interacting with a lot of people I like. It should all be great. After the grueling 11-hour plane trip.

But I'm also looking forward to getting home afterward (after a grueling 12-hour plane trip), to ending my October wanderings and returning to a regular sleep schedule and a regular gaming schedule and a regular time with my honey (and my cats) schedule.

And hopefully I'll be returning to a California that's not burning down.

One of the super-cool things about the hills behind the East Bay is that there are near continuous parks throughout them. More notably, there's a ridgeline trail which runs across them. You can literally walk from San Pablo to Castro Valley and never step off a trail except to cross the very rare street. This has long intrigued me, though it's actually an overly long distance to walk in a day.

(The Bay Area Ridge Trail actually is supposed to circle the whole bay. Heck it even goes through Ed Levin Park and Alum Rock Park, two of my stomping grounds when I was growing up in the South Bay. But it's not all complete, nor is all of it as continuous as in the hills that are just above Berkeley.)

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I've walked a good range of the trails above our local area. In various segments I've walked as far south as Sibley Park and as far north as Tilden and down to the San Pablo Dam Reservoir. (Mysteriously, the ridgeline trail doesn't continue along the ridgeline to Wildcat Canyon Park.)

But Saturday I decided to make my biggest effort ever, by walking from my house, up Panoramic Hill, and above that to the Ridgeline Trail, then walking it south into Sibley, then into Huckleberry, then into Redwood Regional Park, then down to the Chabot Space & Science Center.

That final destination was chosen because it was one of the rare places up near the ridgeline where I could catch a bus back to BART.

---

So Saturday I was out of the house by 10 am, and it was off to the races.

The walk was glorious.

The trek up the hill was hard because I took it fast, but it got me to the ridgeline trail before 11.30. It was one of the time I was panting and breathing hard.

As usual, I had to hop a gate at the top of the hill, because EBMUD sucks and purposefully blocks access to the ridgeline trail from the fire trails that exit above Strawberry Canyon, just across the street.

The walk from the so-called Scotts Peak Trailhead to Fish Ranch Road was glorious. I love the sweeping views of eastern CoCoCo, and then you slide back to the other side of the hills. There's some close grass there that I was a little nervous about because the rains have led to a snake season. And I heard some buzzing just off the trail in some of that thick grass that made me very nervous, but I quickly moved through. And enjoyed the great views.

The walk from Fish Ranch Road to Old Tunnel Road was beautiful too. I love the heavily forested paths.

In Sibley now. The walk from Old Tunnel Road to the Sibley Staging Area was trying. It was more uphill than I remembered, and some of the path was deeply cut by running water. Still, the area remained so gorgeous.

At 12.30 I had lunch at Sibley, then wrote for a while, then fixed an issue at RPGnet, then finished my article. At 1.30 I headed on.

Following the Ridgeline Trail brought me further back into Sibley than I usually go. More forested trails. I really need to explore the rest of the park sometime. Is there really a volcano back there?

There's no sign when you cross into Huckleberry, but suddenly there's a huge valley spread out before you. You cut down into the valley, cross the stream at the bottom of it twice, then start moving back up. It was gorgeous too.

Except that heading back up revealed my one problem of the day. A .11 section of trail was marked closed until made safe. (Which usually means a 1-10 year delay in East Bay parks.) There was absolutely no other way to get through Huckleberry, from Sibley, so I decided to hike up to see if the problem was something I found safe enough or too dangerous. The answer was a big landslide below the trail. I'd actually seen it from below as I walked up the creek, before cutting back, and had been awed by it. Here it just kissed the edge of the trail and I tested the ground and found it totally firm. So I continued along, staying well away from the edge. No problem. Curiously, there was no such trail-closure sign at the top.

(And that's a trail that really needs to be fixed, as it's the only way to get through that part of the ridgeline trail. For want of a .11 trail segment, a ridgeline trail was lost.)

Huckleberry and Redwood Regional don't quite touch. But, much as in the area between Fish Ranch and Tunnel Road, there's a segment of trail through the land in between to keep you walking in beauty.

I took my other break for the day just outside of Redwood Regional, where I was pleased to see a bench. Four squares of chocolate and one issue of a comic book.

Then it was over a small ridge and into Redwood Regional, where I circled around the East Ridge Trail and the West Ridge Trail until I got to Chabot Space & Science Lab. I think of that as the main commuter trail that gets you to the interesting parts of Redwood Regional, but it's actually attractive too, looking over another big basin, this one facing south.

While in Redwood Regional, I checked Google Maps to see how much longer it would take to continue on to Castro Valley BART. Four and a half hours. Huh.

As I neared Chabot, I realized that I was going to just miss the 4pm bus, by a minute or so. So, I picked up my pace and got there at 3.59. This was the other time I was panting and breathing hard. No bus. No bus at 4. No Bus at 4.01. I finally decided that AC Transit was playing their usual game of randomly skipping a bus every once in a while. The bus arrived at 4.07.

Then it was down to Fruitvale BART. (On the bottom five of my list of BART stations.) Then it was six(!) stops home. Yep, I walked six BART stops along the ridgeline!

---

Total walk, 6 hours (minus an hour for lunch). So, five hours or so for reals. 13 or 14 miles. Exactly 300 flights of stairs when I got home. Hours of beauty.

A great day.

And nice to see other people frequently using and enjoying the trails. I saw people on every major segment, and quite a few people when I passed by some of the staging areas, at Old Tunnel Road, at Sibley, in Huckleberry, and in Redwood Regional. (The last is clearly the most popular, but it's also the biggest.)

I'm a little sore today, primarily my legs (from walking) and my back (from carrying my backpack with computer for writing).

---

And I got home from my day of walking in beauty to discover more horror in London, as another terror attack seems intended to push the British people to the conservative, Islamophobic platform in the upcoming snap election. Just as seemed to be the case in France several weeks ago. I don't even understand a world any more where terrorist groups theoretically fighting for Muslims (in horrible, misguided, evil ways) are purposefully supporting Islamophobes to in turn drive recruitment for the terror organizations. It's like the snake has eaten its tail and disappeared inside itself.

Condolences and support to my British friends, victims of terrorism and Theresa May.

We were supposed to be roleplaying on Saturday, but somehow it fell through. It was honestly a bit frustrating, because we'd planned the date a month and a half ahead, when people were constantly scheduled in the interim. Then we'd replanned it weeks ahead, when we choose between two weekends. But still the gaming weekend arrived and there was cub scouts and new jobs and extra hours.

And no gaming.

So it goes in adulthood gaming.

And that's how I ended up crawling through a jungle.

---

I've gotten pretty adept at climbing the hills behind our house. This Saturday I did some writing up on the Clark Kerr campus in the early afternoon, then went for my Saturday hike. I took the Stonewall Panoramic Trail up to the West-East Trail, then took an unnamed Fire Trail up to Grizzly Peak Blvd and the Scotts Peak Trailhead.

The Scotts Peak Trailhead always baffles me because it's clearly labeled, but there's just a locked gate there, despite that being the only easy way to access the Skyline Trail from the Strawberry Creek fire trails.

Anywho, gates with horizontal bars up and down them do not deter me.

---

The Skyline Trail from Scotts Peak Trailhead to Fish Ranch Road was the first bit of new trail for me for the day. It's part of the Bay Area Ridge Trail, so I was excited to walk it. I don't expect I'll ever walk the whole thing, but I was nonetheless happy to fill in a gap.

I've definitely now walked it from Volmer Park in Tilden to the main entrance at Sibley. I've also biked it in Tilden from Inspiration Point to where it inexplicably leaves Nimitz Way to run down to San Pablo Dam, despite being a "ridgeline" trail. And, I may have walked some of it in Redwood Regional Park (though it appears to run along the west ridge, not the east ridge, so I haven't actually walked much of that). Oh, and I've seen trail markers while out in San Francisco. (I wish there were better maps of the whole thing, but the maps are all broken up into little sections, and they don't do a good job of showing the context of where they are.)

Anywho, the segment that I walked was very nice. A lot of it ran just east of the ridge, which meant I got great views of Orinda, Mount Diablo, and places in between (and often could pick out the path I walked to Orinda the other week). But there were also some sweeping views of the Bay. Much of it was across lands filled with high, dry grass. It's obviously heading toward fire season, but it was still attractive on Saturday (and a unique landscape).

Eventually I scrambled up a pseudo-path right next to Fish Ranch Road, to escape to my next destination.

---

The Claremont Canyon Regional Preserve is weird. The maps aren't consistent about what it contains, and neither Google nor Apple Maps shows any trails on the half of the Preserve south of Claremont Road, covering Telegraph Canyon and Gwin Canyon. But, when I hiked through Summit Pass (where Claremont, Fish Ranch, and Grizzly Peak meet) a few weeks ago, I discovered a big map and an entrance down into Telegraph Canyon.

So, I put that on my mental list of places to check out, and later when I got to a networked computer I discovered official Claremont maps showing some trails in that southern area ... though they weren't consistent either. Everyone agreed there was a north-south Gwin Canyon Trail running along the western side of the Preserve, but there was disagreement over whether there were trails running down the hillside.

But I was confident.

So on Saturday I walked by that map up at Summit Pass and started heading downward. And there were indeed trails — two of them, The Summit House Trail and the Willow Trail. They were a bit overgrown up by Summit Pass, but they got very cool as they entered the woods. There were trees looming all over, but also occasional clearings. I considered sitting down in one and writing on a tree log ... but decided it was getting late.

And these trails, they were beautifully curated. Whenever the path got too steep, wooden steps made the going easier. And as the trail cut back and forth across a creek there were simple wooden plank bridges.

I was totally loving it, considering it one of the best trails I'd found in the area.

---

There's a gate out to Claremont Road at the bottom of the Summit House Trail. I checked it out because I wanted to double-check I knew where I was. But my real goal was the Gwin Canyon Trail, which is the one that cuts across the bottom of the Preserve. I felt the need to check where I was because the Gwin Canyon Trail was unsigned ... which was a bit of a surprise, as the previous trails were extensively signed every time they met.

I grew more confident as I crossed another bridge over a creek. This one was even finished, showing that the people working in the Preserve were just upping the quality of their work.

But a bit past that the trail was suddenly covered in really fresh dirt. And a bit past that it was suddenly angling off the side of the hill, making walking along it tough and adventurous. I went out along that shaky dirt slope for a bit, but ultimately decided I must be doing something wrong.

Fortunately I remembered a path up off the side of the trail, just after the bridge, so I backtracked to that, and figured this must have been a side trail created after the avalanche or whatever.

So I took that for a while, and eventually it dropped back down to what I thought was the original trail, but if so it was pretty poorly upkept.

And soon after that I lost the trail.

And I backtracked and I lost the trail.

Again and again.

A few times I pushed through brush and bush that I figured must have overgrown the trail.

And after a bit of that, I was pretty much in the middle of forest with no trail to be seen.

---

Now I wasn't exactly lost in the wood. I could literally see Claremont Road much of the time, but it was across a creek, and going down and up its sides looked all but impossible.

I also had my cell phone. But the problem was that it didn't show the trails so even with GPS, I couldn't accurately figure out where I was in relationship to the supposed trail. I did have a PDF of the Claremont maps on my laptop, so a few times I cross-referenced the two, and I was staying close to where the trail should be (thanks to the creek and the hills making it easy to stay on course), but I couldn't find it.

Meanwhile I was crashed through the wilderness. There wasn't a lot of ground cover back in the woods, but it was a lot of work to crash through it because dead trees and branches kept getting in the way.

I was slowly making my way along where the path was supposed to be, but I do mean slow. I figured I'd eventually get back to the opposite side of the park where I could exit, but I really wasn't sure how long it would take.

(I called K. to let her know I'd be late for dinner because I was sorta' lost in the woods.)

Often when I'm out in the wilderness, I worry about (1) snakes; (2) poison oak; and (3) poison ivy in that order. But as I crashed further and further through foliage I got less and less worried about it all.

But there was still no trail to be found!

---

After about a quarter of a mile in about 45 minutes I came up with a new plan. I pulled up the altimeter app on my phone; since my maps of Claremont showed the height in 10 foot increments, I thought this might be a more accurate way to find the trail. It actually showed me within 10 feet or so height of the trail, but I finally decided it must be above me. So I crashed upward ...

And voila!

Slightly poorly upkept trail!

I walked the last half-mile or so much more quickly. I was surprised to find the last bit was considerably uphill, so I was quite tired when I exited the park. I'd expected that 1.11 mile traversal of the Gwin Canyon Trail to take about 20 minutes, but it had taken about an hour twenty.

---

I emerged in the rich hills far above the Claremont Hotel. On the way down I noticed a nice-looking Asian guy out getting his mail, and I asked him if he would be willing to get me some water. He immediately volunteered to get me a bottle, and I smiled and explained that I was just looking to get my water bottle refilled with tap water. He was happy to do so.

---

By the time I got home my Fitbit was reading over 30,000 steps and over 250 flights of stairs. Those were record highs for me, but beneath the next badge levels. The gamification systems won me over and I went for a walk after dinner to get me the 35,000 step badge and the 300 flight of stair badge.

I was then sore on Sunday.

---

I've since found some discussions of the Gwin Canyon Trail that claim it ends .6 miles from the far terminus that I was walking toward. This might explain what happened. I now suspect there's a .4 mile or so gap between that fresh dirt past the bridge and where the trail picks up.

If so, it'd be nice if they didn't mark the darned trail on the maps ... and maybe put up some warnings where it disappeared!

(But it looks like it's in process one way or another.)

---

And that was the Gwin Canyon Adventure.

Overheard on AC Transit:

"There's something wrong with Oakland, something wrong with it. You go to Berkeley or Emeryville, and everyone's smiling, but in Oakland, there's just this sadness. I don't know what it is, but there's something wrong with Oakland."

I think it's called poverty or maybe economic and social inequity.

But you're totally crazy anywhere, based on your constant monologue.

---

I had a cardiologist appointment today, but it was still raining fairly hard an hour out, so I decided I needed to take the bus. I hate doing so because AC Transit is so unreliable. I have to set out an hour early instead of 30 minutes early, because you never know when you might be waiting for 30 or 50 minutes because a few buses randomly disappeared off the schedule.

I got to the bus stop a few minutes after a 1R, the rapid transit bus, came by. Cursing my luck, I looked at the NextBus display; it said a 1 was coming in 4 minutes. No problem. I watched it count down. 3 minutes. 2. 1. Arriving Now. 19 minutes. 18 minutes. Yep, that's AC Transit.

The 1 did finally show up a few minutes later. By that time 4 or 5 people had congregated at the stop, two of them clearly crazy. The one who would later monologue throughout the trip was the worst. He jaywalked across Telegraph, pausing in the traffic here and there, then halted right where the bus would stop for a minute or two before he finally ascended the sidewalk. He then pushed his way into the bus shelter with his umbrella fully open like no one was there. Stinking of cigarettes.

So we're on the bus, headed south. About halfway down Telegraph we caught up to the 1R that we were 10 minutes or so behind. And then passed it. (It passed us back several blocks later, but still, we were neck and neck.)

The R I should note stands for "Rapid", as in "goes faster than the normal 1". Which apparently is not always the case, which is unsurprising to me. It's not the first time I've seen the slightly different lines cause chaotic results, as one bus runs ahead, starts picking up all the passengers, then gets loaded down, and so ends up running slower for the rest of the trip.

But the whole idea of running a normal and rapid line simultaneously has always seemed crazy to me, mainly because AC Transit is totally unreliable. That means you can't reliably depend on getting either a 1 or 1R, no matter what the schedule says. And if you can't depend on getting the faster bus, what's the point? It just becomes a random crap shoot that sometimes you get a bus that goes faster. Maybe. Or Maybe Not.

I got to the Doctor's office about 10 minutes early, which means that my trip took about 50 minutes rather than about 20.

I got to see the doctor about 25 minutes later.

The last few weeks have been stressful. I've had some medium-term financial concerns and though Kimberly has been having improvement on some ailments, others have been moving toward crises.

So.

The goal of the holiday weekend was to relax and destress as much as I could. (Same goal as any holiday weekend.)

---

Saturday I had Taco Bell for lunch and rode up through Wildcat Creek Canyon before settling for a bit at Jewel Lake.

It's currently one of my favorite rides, as there's lots of beautiful terrain, and the biking largely remains within my capability. (There are three large hills on the ride up through Wildcat Canyon, each of which ascends 100-150 feet in a pretty short distance, and I usually walk either one or two of those; the trek out of Tilden Park at the end sometimes requires some walking too.)

On my way into the park, I usually take a break at a picnic table near a water fountain that's a few miles into the park. It's a frequent stop-off for hikers, because it's the only water fountain that I know of anywhere in the south side of Wildcat Canyon. Sometimes I ignore the people who come by, and sometimes I talk with them. Saturday was a talking day. I've even grown familiar enough with the park that I was accurately able to say it was about 2 miles more to Jewel Lake. (Actual mileage on my bike computer later on was right around 2.1.)

Sadly, Jewel Lake is now even more desiccated than it was last year. You can walk all the way around the lake where the water used to be, and the water no longer goes out to the floodgates that lead down to Wildcat Creek. Hopefully we get some rain before the Lake dries up entirely or there are going to be some very unhappy turtles and birds. (The birds could probably fly or waddle up to the larger Lake Anza, but I wouldn't bet on the turtles being able to do so.)

---

Sunday is my typical day with Kimberly. We grabbed some Subway, ate it at our local dog park, and then walked up to Ici for some ice cream. It was purposefully relaxed, between busyness on Saturday and Monday.

Unfortunately, Kimberly got really exhausted just from walking to Ici and back, due to problems with some of her meds. We'd been talking about doing something more adventurous together on Monday, but instead I ended up going it my own ...

---

So Monday I ended up going to Redwood Regional Park after lunch at Wendy's. I've only been up there a couple of times, so it was a real treat, and something nice to do on a holiday.

It's a hard ride, of about 1000 feet vertical ascent, and it was a hot day. These two factors probably combined to make me more likely to make it up to the Park, because I felt I had to keep pushing to make it all the way up the hill before it got too hot. So, I did it without any stops to read or write, as I might have done otherwise.

From the top of the Shepherd Canyon Trail to the entrance to Redwood Regional Park is an ascent of about 350 feet in less than a mile. That's rough; it means that the gradient varies from 5-10% with the occasional short, level patch. I did the smart thing and mostly walked it. Nonetheless, I still collapsed and rested atop the leaf-strewn ground for several minutes when I hit 1000 feet. I made it up to the park gate at around 1.15pm, after leaving Wendy's around 11.45am.

I've previously biked around the park and biked in the park on the (bikeable) East Rim trail, but my Fitbit has encouraged me to not stay confined to my bike. So this time I locked my bike up at the parking lot (no actual bike locks, which is typical, so I used a sign) and descended down the Stream Trail.

My theory was that as soon as I got into the Redwood forests and below the rim the temperature would drop, and it did. Too hot 90s to very comfortable 70s, I'd guess The walk along the (sadly entirely dry) stream was very pleasant. I eventually took a side trail and found a nice quiet place to write for a bit. It was at the convergence of three trails, and they were frequent people looking confused and trying to figure out where they were and which path to tke. I was able to point most of them back toward the Stream Trail.

I ran out of water while writing, so decided to take the Stream Trail a bit further to what was marked as water on the map ... but it was all turned off! So I went even further to "Trail's End", and there was water there. (Whew!) It was actually a good place to go to, because the Stream Trail from the parking lot to Trail's End is bicycle-free, but beyond there, there's a bikeable road. So, some other day I could finish the Stream Trail by biking around the whole park, and then biking up the remaining bit of the Trail.

Early in the day, while ascending the hill, I was still feeling stressed from the aforementioned pressures, but somewhere in the Redwoods, they disappeared. Mostly not back yet. (Whew!)

On my way back from Trail's End, I took a side path that took my up to the East Rim trail and took that back to the parking lot. It was the most grueling part of the day other than those last 350 feet up the hill. The climb wasn't actually bad, but the Rim Trail was mostly in the (hot) sun and had notable uphills all its own. (But I would have been going up hills in the bright sun coming if I stayed on the Stream Trail too.)

I picked up Taco Bell (again) for dinner for Kimberly and me on the way home.

---

So, that was the Holiday weekend. Lots of junk food, but lots of great exercise out in the wild. I clocked 22+17 = 39 miles on my bike and about 50,000 steps on my Fitbit (which records some fraction of steps when I bike too, but I know I did 4 or 5 miles on foot in the redwoods).

Should be good prep for hiking with the folks on Friday when they're visiting.

I'm afraid that Hawaiian Airlines has joined the dark side.

Their food has been substandard for a few years, but I gave them a pass as they're the only US airline that still does food for their peasantry. (And today's chicken & rice dinner wasn't bad.) However, I hadn't realized that last week's lack of an inflight movie was a sign of their continued descent into darkness. It became more obvious at Honolulu this afternoon when they kept coming onto the PA to exhort (extort?) people into renting tablet computers if they wanted to watch any movies during their flight. Again and again they reminded us that it'd be the only entertainment available from them. (And we could rent them for just $17.)

This new love for evil was also obvious in what K. called "The Scam Cart". I noticed it on the flight in, when they quickly wheeled around a cart of snacks for sale before they brought out the breakfast meal. In other words, they wanted to get people to give them money for food because they were hungry … before they bought the real food around. It all seemed even scummier today, on the flight home, when they also pointed out you could buy a bottle of water for just $3.50, in advance of the drink service. They're preying on peoples' needs to make them pay for what they'll be giving away shortly thereafter.

"Gift blanket sets" were also available for $10.

(On the way out of the plane we saw what were presumably free blanket sets scattered around the First Class section like so much debris.)

---

Our flight was an hour too long today. Usually it arrives just after 9pm, but today it arrived after 10pm.

The problem was a long air detour to avoid turbulence. Presumably the same winds that buffeted the Hawaiian islands most of the time we were there.

---

The public transit woes continued at the new Oakland Air Tram, which is clearly not ready for prime time.

First up, it drops from every 10 minute service to every 20 minute service at 10pm, which is ridiculous for the Oakland Airport which still has planes coming at that time. And our plane was so late, that's when we ended up traveling.

Second, when our tram finally arrived, 19.5 minutes after we got to the platform, we were told it was out of service. It sat there for a minute, a "friendly" BART person walked up to the platform, scowling, entered the train, exited it, and then left without saying a word. Then the train pulled out. Another 20 minutes went by and another train showed up. The platform messages were still saying that it was out of service, but by this time we just figured the non-communicative BART people hadn't changed the message, so the ~50-70 of us jumped in and successfully made it to BART (albeit, with standing room only).

Hopefully the kinks are gone by next year, because as of this moment, night time tram usage sucks. If Oakland Airport was trying to compete with SF Airport for convenience of public transport, they failed horribly.

---

We made it home successfully. The vacation rocked despite today's hijinks.

We have desperate cats, despite a daily cat sitter, and one of K's friends also kindly stopping in several times. Lucy is hitting the floor at everything, like she used to after our first few trips. Callisto is wandering the house whining and being smelly.

Apparently we were missed.

Yeah, it's been that kind of week. Work was overly busy and I kept not being able to get to my priorities. K. has been having some troubles.

And there were other annoyances:

We got our new washer and dryer on Thursday ... but discovered the dryer had a big dent in it. Much to my surprise, Home Depot, who contracts the delivery company, would have nothing to do with the problem. They passed it off to the manufacturer ... who happily will be delivering us yet another dryer on Thursday, hopefully sans dent. What a waste though.

We also had a guy in to measure the seven windows we're replacing on Thursday and today I got a very unhappy call telling us that they'd decided that our two big south-facing windows had enough damaged wood around them that they either weren't willing to warranty the work or else we needed to get a contractor in to reframe the windows first. I told them that neither of those options were acceptable, and that without other options we'd need to cancel the order because they couldn't fulfill the contract ... and that got our (great) sales guy working hard to come up with another solution. He came back a few hours later and let me know their in-house team actually was up to the work and that they'd give it to us at cost. So, it's a considerable addition to the cost of the windows (+30%), but we'll be replacing the framing of windows that we knew were troublesome, so I feel like it's still a win.

I also decided to withdraw from a game design project that I was working on with a friend, because I wasn't comfortable with the collaborative process, and we weren't creating a game that really made me happy. That was a bit of a bummer, but I think the right choice. Which means I'll have more time for my personal writing, I suppose.

As I said in the title, it has been two steps forward with all this ongoing stuff ... but also one step back.

---

But our new mailbox works great. Also the new locks on our front doors.

And I'm really looking forward to less heat loss through windows ... just in time for Spring.

---

Meanwhile ...

18 months after it closed down, our local Safeway on College finally reopened last week, after being rebuilt. That's about 6 months past schedule, at least some of that time lost to the NIMBY jerks of Elmwood, who did everything they could to keep the 1950s era ugly-box Safeway that used to be there. When they started raising a ruckus again after the store had been torn down, I half-hoped that Safeway gave up, to leave a rat-infested wasteland for the fine folk of Elmwood.

Anywho, I went to the new Safeway today, and it was nice enough. Our northside Safeway (which is a little further away) got rebuilt a few years ago, and the new College one is much the same ... except that it has more space and so a teeny bit more selection and a lot more space in the aisles. The latter is really nice. (The northside Safeway is a little cramped.)

On the downside, the new College Safeway seems to have no clue as to who its clientele is. For example, they had some fruits and vegetables (like carrots!) available only in an organic version. That'd be fine if their clientele was entirely Elmwood and Rockridge, who love their arugula, but in my experience 50% of the people who shop at that Safeway are students, many of them bussing down to the Safeway because it's the only reasonably priced grocery story on southside. Mind you, this Safeway also had two whole aisles of booze ... but it seemed to be for high-class drunkards, not the wine-in-a-box and gallon-jugs-of-hootch that the students seem to prefer.

They also seemed to have less sale/club prices than at the northside Safeway, but that might change after their opening few weeks.

Anywho, it looks like a probably acceptable destination for the Friday nights we stay toward the south, rather than venturing to downtown for dinner (which puts us much of the way toward the other Safeway). There's been many a Friday night, when I've cursed having to cut all the way across town to get groceries, so those days I'll be happier. As long as the sale prices don't remain less obvious.

Last night Kimberly and I were sitting in our Living Room, relaxing, and I heard three kids walking down the street outside. Suddenly, there's a SMASH of something breaking, like a beer bottle or a car window. One of them says, "Did you do that!?" And they all broke out laughing.

And that's pretty much the state of "protest" in Berkeley these last two nights. Two nights in a row they've started the protests at around 5pm, so that they could walk the streets under the cover of night. Not something you do if you're trying to be noticed, but definitely something that you're do if you're trying to hide criminal activities. And that's exactly what's been going on.

Last night? Vandalism, arson, looting. A Trader Joe's, a Radio Shack, and a Wells Fargo got hit. Tonight? Vandalism, arson, looting, and assault. Another Radio Shack got hit, and someone got put in the hospital after he tried to protect it because one of the protestors hit him in the head with a hammer. Also, windows broken at Cream, another Wells Fargo vandalized (with crowbars!), as well as a Sprint, T-Mobile, and Mechanics Bank. JP Morgan. McDonalds. It sounds like they've run rampant destroying half of Shattuck. Burning trash strewn all about Telegraph and Shattuck. Several police cars got demolished.

The oblivious kids at Cal keep asking why they got tear gassed and dispersed during a "peaceful protest", but these "protests" have been anything but peaceful. You don't bring hammers and crowbars to peaceful protests. You don't wear black masks.

Some folks claim that despite the overall tenor of those gatherings, most of the protestors are peaceful. That may well be true, at least in Berkeley — and indeed some protestors have tried to defend some businesses, like the guy who almost got murdered with a hammer. But it's also irrelevant. As long as they're ultimately protecting the criminals, as long as they're shielding them in their crowds, they're accomplices to those crimes. They're also totally deligitimizing the movement, much as happened when Occupy descended into anarchy. If they want to have a peaceful protest, they need to actively dispel the looters, the vandals, the arsonists, and the thugs with the hammers. They need to point them out to the police, and until they do, they're just as guilty of those crimes.

Some tear gas drifted down toward our house last night. It was just barely obvious enough to slightly irritate my eyes, but I worried a bit about the cats. I also was genuinely fearful of the protestors and had to think whether to leave our porch light on or off, trying to determine which would make our house more or less of a target.

---

Sadly, Oakland has been putting up with this bullcrap for years, with a couple of violent protests occurring every couple of years. I'd thought the current wave of protests had ended just before Thanksgiving, but then the city suffered more earlier this week. I was depressed when I went to Downtown Oakland on Saturday and saw that even more stores had suffered damage. The saddest was "The Wine Merchant" or something like that, a brand-new store that apparently didn't ask why the rent was so low right next to Frank Ogawa Plaza.

Well, now they know I guess.

---

The helicopters are once more overhead. They're messing with my head.